Balanced and Barefoot, by Angela J. Hanscom
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Dr. Gable’s Book Review Balanced and Barefoot, by Angela J. Hanscom https://www.sott.net/article/382170-Free-range-children-Unstructured-play-is-critical-for-kids-their-brain-development A couple months ago I was invited to Glen Elg Country School to listen to Angela Hanscom speak about the importance of outdoor play in the lives of children. Ms. Hanscom is a pediatric occupational therapist, a mother of three, and the founder of TimberNook, a nature-based developmental camp for children. I consider myself someone who believes in the importance of outdoor play, and I was fairly certain I would enjoy her talk. By the end, I was grateful for and impressed by her insight into why outdoor free play and unrestrained movement are vital for the physical, cognitive and emotional development of our children. According to the CDC at the time of this publication, “9.4% of children aged 2-17 years (approximately 6.1 million) have received an ADHD diagnosis, 7.4% of children aged 3-17 years (approximately 4.5 million) have a diagnosed behavior problem, and 7.1% of children aged 3-17 years (approximately 4.4 million) have diagnosed anxiety”1. At the same time screens fight for the attention of our children, teachers are having increasing difficulties keeping the attention of children in the classroom. Parents are at their busiest, working endlessly to raise healthy children while battling video games and social media. Many of us are looking to end the chaos. For this reason, I find it of utmost importance that we take a look at outdoor play and its role in helping children grow and thrive in the world around them. Let’s travel back to when you were a school aged child. Do you remember playing outside often? Did you have a big backyard, or did you live in the city and play in a nearby park? Did your family go camping, hiking, or to the beach? Were you outside every day after school with siblings or friends? How many hours a day do you think you spent outdoors during the week or on the weekend? …Now think about your child(ren)? How much time do they spend playing outside every day? Do they have recess, for how long and how many? Consider how much time they are outside after school, during the summer? Do you encourage your kids to play outside when it is raining and when it is cold? Angela Hanscom asked us to consider these scenarios and most of us agreed we spent 2-4 hours a day outside as children, even in the cold. We also agreed our children are lucky if they get even an hour of outdoor play each day. 1 https://www.cdc.gov/childrensmentalhealth/data.html Playgrounds were once filled with exhilarating fun. The days of merry-go-rounds… A friend would grab the handle and start running, pulling the merry-go-round around and around, till it was spinning really fast, then jump on and enjoy the ride. Swings had long chains, encouraging you to swing really high and then jump off, or enticing you to twist the chain, then pick up your feet and unravel. Free standing bars 4- 5 feet high, waiting for you to wrap your knees and hang upside down, letting your hair fall, possibly dragging it in the dirt, swinging yourself back and forth. Domed jungle gyms trampled by 15 kids scrambling to the top. Teeter Totters with at least one kid per side, we all remember the time our sibling got off without telling us and we crashed to the ground. Tall metal slides to rush down, trees to climb. Every time I remind parents of these playgrounds of our youth, they always smile, because they remember the fun. Consider the playgrounds your children are exposed to today. Maybe a slide, made of plastic and likely not very high. Often no swings, and almost guaranteed no merry-go-rounds, no dome jungle gyms, and no metal sliding boards. Foam mats or mulch flooring underfoot if they are lucky, concrete if they are not. Ms. Hanscom felt she needed to help stimulate change and is passionate about outdoor free play, for this reason she founded TimberNook, a nature-based play camp for kids which is 100% outdoors. Her first camp was located on her own property, now TImberNook camps are located all over the US and abroad. TimberNook’s mission is to “challenge the senses and inspire creativity, independence, and imagination in the great outdoors”. In order to appreciate the importance of outdoor free play in development we need to understand the senses. Touch, taste, sight, smell, hear, these are the senses we likely all recognize and with which we have some familiarity. We should include on this list, proprioception and vestibular sense. Proprioception refers to knowing where your body is in space and knowing how much force your body needs for a particular task, otherwise known as the sense of self movement. Receptors for proprioception are located in muscles and joints. For example, reaching out to find a light switch in a dark room. You know where your arm is even when you cannot see it. Walking down the hallway you keep yourself from running into corners and walls through your sense of proprioception. When you go to give someone a handshake or hug, you know how much force to use to have a “strong, firm handshake” or to avoid giving a hug that is “a little too tight”. Receiving less proprioceptive input can result in core muscle weakness, sensory sensitivities, and an inability to control the amount of force imparted in movement. In these situations, we can see delays in achieving gross and fine motor milestones. Children may have “heavy” handwriting, often ripping the paper when writing and erasing. They may give “hang on you” hugs and be unable to tolerate clothing that provides too much or too little pressure. Many of these children go onto develop anxiety if these deficits are not corrected. Vestibular sense is your awareness of the orientation of your head and body and involved in balance and equilibrium. Imagine spinning around, getting dizzy, your vestibular sense helps keep your body upright. If you swing really high, flip on a trampoline or practice yoga, you are able to tell which way is up. The anatomy of your vestibular system is very complex and parts of it still not understood. For the sake of this article, let’s consider a simplified view. The vestibular system is the communication between the hair cells located in your inner ear and your brain. Hair cells detect motion and changes in head position. They bend and move in different directions depending on if you are jumping, bending, spinning, climbing, flipping, hanging upside down, and so on. Neurophsy.wisc.edu An unchallenged vestibular system results in a decrease in balance and coordination. Children with an immature vestibular system can display behaviors categorized as sensory avoidant or sensory seeking. Children who display “avoidant” tendencies, may be timid when it comes to trying new activities, especially those requiring balance, such riding a bike. They often avoid escalators and elevators, feel unsteady on stairs and uneven surfaces and can be referred to as clumsy. Instability can result in fear and avoidance of activities leading, a sedentary lifestyle and anxiety. Children who display “seeking” behaviors seem to “move fast”, may appear fidgety, and unfocused. They may tip their chair when sitting, get up and walk around when asked to sit, and may have explosive behaviors. These children may jump from unsafe heights or partake in other risky behaviors. They can have difficulty distinguishing reasonable vs dangerous risks. What types of movements do your child(ren) encounter day to day? When they are spinning in the living room, or tipping their chair at the dinner table do you ask them to stop for a fear that they may get hurt or break something? Do you ask them to stop jumping or climbing on the couch? If you see them climbing a tree are you able to let them or do you ask them to get down? I have definitely done ALL of these things at one point or another. Angela Hanscom has convinced me that I need rethink how I respond when my children are engaging in these activities and consider it a message that my children have not gotten enough of the right kind of movement that day. I need to find ways for them to have more unstructured outdoor play. Kids who spin around in circles over and over are learning how to keep from falling and training their body not to feel nauseas while doing it. Climbing a tree tilting sideways to reach the next branch they are learning balance, strengthening their core muscles and figuring out how to navigate the risk of falling with the reward of getting to the top. Swimming in a competitive race, children learn to take manageable risk by diving off the blocks, receive proprioceptive input due to the constant pressure of the water on their body, and stimulate their vestibular sense by rotating side to side, up and down and flipping during turns. One of my best friends and roommate in college was an excellent diver and I can only imagine the amount of proprioception and vestibular sense she used every day to complete her front 1 ½ with three twists. How do we help our children develop sophisticated proprioceptive and vestibular sense? Spend time outside of course. Why is outdoors better? My family room is much smaller than my backyard.